Chair Redo – Guest Post By Kelly

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My sister Kelly has graciously agreed to guest post today about her furniture redo. She is our family traveler, a mighty fierce businesswoman, and always up for fun. Kelly is slowly adjusting to Chicago winters by taking extended tropical vacations.

Aunt Kelly & Caroline at our sister Amanda’s wedding

 Hi, I’m Jennifer’s sister Kelly. I am thrilled to write my first ever blog post and share with you my little bit of creativity. To set things straight, Jennifer is the creative one, I didn’t inherit 1/10th of her DIY, artistic abilities. However, when you are trying to find ways to not constantly spend (bleed!) money, but improve your house at the same time, you have to get creative.

I inherited this Adirondack chair a couple of years ago and it has just sat on my patio for the last couple of years.
I was ready to throw it out and go purchase new furniture, however, given that I live in Chicago and we frankly don’t have that long of a summer to use outdoor furniture, I decided to give it a shot to see if I could re-purpose it.

  1. I sanded all of the old paint chips off the chair just using sandpaper sheets
  2. I decided to use some left over blue and purple paint samples I had laying around from another project.  I had great aspirations of painting lots of different stripes, but then realized paint samples just don’t really contain all that much paint!
Paint Samples & First Coat of Paint

I let the first coat dry overnight and then painted a second coat which actually ended up being a different color (hey, I ran out of the first sample, I was trying not to spend much money!)

  1. The final step was to add a coat of polyurethane to seal the paint and hope that maybe it will survive one Chicago winter

The only money I spent was for the container of polyurethane which was about $8.  A new Adirondack chair costs well over $100, so I feel pretty good about my DIY project.

Job well done Kelly! I am so impressed that you started and finished a project in one weekend. Unheard of around here.

Have you salvaged any old furniture like this?

7 thoughts on “Chair Redo – Guest Post By Kelly”

  2. I’ve seen the chair in person and I must say, it looks so great! Way to get creative and save some money in the process!

  4. The photos don’t do it justice. In person the old ratty chair was much worse that it looks and the new paint job looks great. Now that it is blue you can find it in the snow (not that you’d want to). Great Job.

  5. I do not know why but this post is jumping up under Amanda’s name not mine…it was doing that last week, too so I did not post much……As far as repurposing furniture, dad and I tend to “go shopping” in our own house first….for our recently repainted study/guest room I turned an old sold wood side board into a laptop desk…using 200 sand paper first, one thin coat of white (latex wall paint–Benjamin Moore-paper mache), a 100 light sanding, another thin coat, a 100 lite sanding, and a final coat of white, it looked quite good…I sanded again and finished with a water polyurethane of two coats…one would have been better….but we saved money and it fits in lovely with our lt. blue walls with medium colored baskets under it…Even without painting..just rethinking a piece helps…came close to throwing out a small china cabinet but by placing it in the entrance between great room and kitchen and filling it with cookbooks, fine glasses, etc…it has new life….Pat Becker

  7. Great job Kelly. We have a few projects around our house that could use some attention..you’re hired!

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